No.

19-___

IN THE

Supreme Court of the United States

_____________

SENATORS RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, RICHARD J. DURBIN, PATTY

MURRAY, ELIZABETH WARREN, AMY KLOBUCHAR, BERNARD
SANDERS, PATRICK LEAHY, SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, CHRISTOPHER
A. COONS, MAZIE K. HIRONO, CORY A. BOOKER, KAMALA D.
HARRIS, MICHAEL F. BENNET, MARIA CANTWELL, BENJAMIN L.
CARDIN, TOM CARPER, CATHERINE CORTEZ MASTO, TAMMY
DUCKWORTH, KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, MARTIN HEINRICH, TIM
KAINE, EDWARD J. MARKEY, JEFF MERKLEY, CHRIS MURPHY,
JACK REED, BRIAN SCHATZ, TOM UDALL, CHRIS VAN HOLLEN,
AND RON WYDEN, Petitioners,
v.
DONALD J. TRUMP, IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY
AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, Respondent.
_____________

On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the

U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
_____________

PETITION FOR A WRIT OF CERTIORARI

_____________

ELIZABETH B. WYDRA
BRIANNE J. GOROD*
BRIAN R. FRAZELLE
CONSTITUTIONAL
ACCOUNTABILITY CENTER
1200 18th Street NW, Suite 501
Washington, D.C. 20036
(202) 296-6889
brianne@theusconstitution.org
Counsel for Petitioners

July 6, 2020 * Counsel of Record

 QUESTION PRESENTED
Do legislators have standing to seek judicial relief
when their votes have been “completely nullified,”
Raines v. Byrd, 521 U.S. 811, 823 (1997)?

(i)
 ii
PARTIES TO THE PROCEEDINGS
Plaintiffs-appellees in the court of appeals were
Senators Richard Blumenthal, Richard J. Durbin,
Patty Murray, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar,
Bernard Sanders, Patrick Leahy, Sheldon
Whitehouse, Christopher A. Coons, Mazie K. Hirono,
Cory A. Booker, Kamala D. Harris, Michael F. Bennet,
Maria Cantwell, Benjamin L. Cardin, Tom Carper,
Catherine Cortez Masto, Tammy Duckworth, Kirsten
E. Gillibrand, Martin Heinrich, Tim Kaine, Edward J.
Markey, Jeff Merkley, Chris Murphy, Jack Reed,
Brian Schatz, Tom Udall, Chris Van Hollen, and Ron
Wyden; and Representatives Jerrold Nadler, Alma Ad-
ams, Pete Aguilar, Nanette Diaz Barragán, Karen
Bass, Joyce Beatty, Ami Bera, Donald S. Beyer, Jr.,
Sanford D. Bishop, Jr., Earl Blumenauer, Lisa Blunt
Rochester, Suzanne Bonamici, Brendan F. Boyle, An-
thony Brown, Julia Brownley, Cheri Bustos, G.K. But-
terfield, Salud O. Carbajal, Tony Cárdenas, André
Carson, Sean Casten, Kathy Castor, Joaquin Castro,
Judy Chu, David N. Cicilline, Gilbert R. Cisneros, Jr.,
Katherine Clark, Yvette D. Clarke, William Lacy Clay,
Emanuel Cleaver II, James E. Clyburn, Steve Cohen,
Gerald E. Connolly, Jim Cooper, J. Luis Correa, Jim
Costa, Joe Courtney, Charlie Crist, Danny K. Davis,
Susan A. Davis, Madeline Dean, Peter DeFazio, Diana
DeGette, Rosa L. DeLauro, Suzan K. DelBene, Val
Butler Demings, Mark DeSaulnier, Ted Deutch, Deb-
bie Dingell, Lloyd Doggett, Michael F. Doyle, Eliot L.
Engel, Veronica Escobar, Anna G. Eshoo, Adriano Es-
paillat, Dwight Evans, Bill Foster, Lois Frankel, Mar-
cia L. Fudge, Tulsi Gabbard, Ruben Gallego, John Gar-
amendi, Jesús G. “Chuy” Garcia, Sylvia Garcia, Jimmy
Gomez, Al Green, Raul M. Grijalva, Deb Haaland,
Josh Harder, Alcee L. Hastings, Jahana Hayes, Denny
Heck, Brian Higgins, James A. Himes, Steny H.
 iii
Hoyer, Jared Huffman, Sheila Jackson Lee, Pramila
Jayapal, Hakeem Jeffries, Eddie Bernice Johnson,
Henry C. “Hank” Johnson, Jr., Marcy Kaptur, William
R. Keating, Robin L. Kelly, Joseph P. Kennedy III, Ro
Khanna, Daniel T. Kildee, Derek Kilmer, Ann Kirk-
patrick, Raja Krishnamoorthi, James R. Langevin,
Rick Larsen, John B. Larson, Brenda L. Lawrence,
Al Lawson, Barbara Lee, Andy Levin, Mike Levin,
John Lewis, Ted W. Lieu, Dave Loebsack, Zoe Lofgren,
Alan Lowenthal, Nita M. Lowey, Ben Ray Luján, Ste-
phen F. Lynch, Carolyn B. Maloney, Sean Patrick
Maloney, Doris Matsui, Betty McCollum, A. Don-
ald McEachin, James P. McGovern, Ann McLane
Kuster, Jerry McNerney, Gregory W. Meeks, Grace
Meng, Gwen S. Moore, Joseph D. Morelle, Seth
Moulton, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, Grace F. Napoli-
tano, Richard E. Neal, Joe Neguse, Donald Norcross,
Alexandria Ocascio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Frank Pal-
lone, Jr., Jimmy Panetta, Bill Pascrell, Jr., Donald M.
Payne, Jr., Nancy Pelosi, Ed Perlmutter, Scott H. Pe-
ters, Dean Phillips, Chellie Pingree, Mark Pocan,
Ayanna Pressley, David E. Price, Mike Quigley, Jamie
Raskin, Kathleen M. Rice, Cedric L. Richmond, Harley
E. Rouda, Lucille Roybal-Allard, C.A. Dutch Ruppers-
berger, Bobby L. Rush, Tim Ryan, Linda T.
Sánchez, John P. Sarbanes, Mary Gay Scanlon, Jan
Schakowsky, Adam B. Schiff, Bradley S. Schneider,
Robert C. “Bobby” Scott, José E. Serrano, Terri Sewell,
Donna Shalala, Brad Sherman, Albio Sires, Adam
Smith, Darren Soto, Jackie Speier, Greg Stanton, Eric
Swalwell, Mark Takano, Bennie G. Thompson, Mike
Thompson, Dina Titus, Rashida Tlaib, Paul D. Tonko,
Norma J. Torres, Lori Trahan, Juan Vargas, Marc Ve-
asey, Filemon Vela, Nydia M. Velázquez, Debbie Was-
serman Schultz, Maxine Waters, Bonnie Watson Cole-
man, Peter Welch, Jennifer Wexton, Susan Wild,
Frederica S. Wilson, and John Yarmuth.
 iv
Defendant-appellant in the court of appeals was
Donald J. Trump, in his official capacity as President
of the United States.
 v
RELATED PROCEEDINGS
The proceedings directly related to this petition are:
Blumenthal, et al. v. Trump, No. 19-5237, U.S.
Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Cir-
cuit (opinion, order, and judgment entered Feb-
ruary 7, 2020).
In re Trump, No. 19-8005, U.S. Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia Circuit (order en-
tered September 4, 2019).
In re Trump, No. 19-5196, U.S. Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia Circuit (order en-
tered July 19, 2019).
Blumenthal, et al. v. Trump, No. 1:17-cv-1154,
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
(opinions and orders entered September 28,
2018; April 30, 2019; June 25, 2019; and August
21, 2019).
 vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
QUESTION PRESENTED ............................ i
PARTIES TO THE PROCEEDINGS ............ ii
RELATED PROCEEDINGS .......................... v
TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................ vi
TABLE OF AUTHORITIES .......................... vii
INTRODUCTION .......................................... 1
OPINIONS AND ORDERS BELOW ............ 3
JURISDICTION ............................................. 3
CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISIONS
INVOLVED ............................................... 3
STATEMENT OF THE CASE ....................... 3
A. The Foreign Emoluments Clause ....... 3
B. President Trump’s Violations ............. 7
C. The District Court’s Decisions ............ 9
D. The Court of Appeals’ Decisions ......... 15
REASONS FOR GRANTING THE
PETITION ................................................ 17
I. The Decision Below Departs from
This Court’s Precedent by Eliminating
Standing for Individual Legislators
When Their Votes Are Completely
Nullified ..................................................... 17
II. The Issues at Stake Are Exceptionally
Important ................................................... 27
CONCLUSION .............................................. 33
 vii
TABLE OF AUTHORITIES
Page(s)
Cases

Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona

Independent Redistricting
Commission,
135 S. Ct. 2652 (2015) ........................... passim

Bowsher v. Synar,
478 U.S. 714 (1986) ............................... 26

Byrd v. Raines,
956 F. Supp. 25 (D.D.C. 1997) .............. 20
Campbell v. Clinton,
203 F.3d 19 (D.C. Cir. 2000) ................. passim

Chenoweth v. Clinton,
181 F.3d 112 (D.C. Cir. 1999) ............... passim

Coleman v. Miller,
307 U.S. 433 (1939) ............................... passim
Comm. on Oversight & Gov’t Reform v.
Holder,
979 F. Supp. 2d 1 (D.D.C. 2013) ........... 11

Cummings v. Murphy,
321 F. Supp. 3d 92 (D.D.C. 2018) ......... 9, 12
District of Columbia v. Trump,
315 F. Supp. 3d 875 (D. Md. 2018) ....... 14

Franklin v. Massachusetts,
505 U.S. 788 (1992) ............................... 15

Hollingsworth v. Perry,
570 U.S. 693 (2013) ............................... 26
 viii
TABLE OF AUTHORITIES – cont’d
Page(s)
Kucinich v. Bush,
236 F. Supp. 2d 1 (D.D.C. 2002) ........... 29

Kucinich v. Obama,
821 F. Supp. 2d 110 (D.D.C. 2011) ....... 29
Nixon v. Fitzgerald,
457 U.S. 731 (1982) ............................... 31

Powell v. McCormack,
395 U.S. 486 (1969) ............................... 10, 22

Raines v. Byrd,
521 U.S. 811 (1997) ............................... passim
Swan v. Clinton,
100 F.3d 973 (D.C. Cir. 1996) ............... 15

United States v. Richardson,

418 U.S. 166 (1974) ............................... 30

Virginia House of Delegates v. Bethune-

Hill,
139 S. Ct. 1945 (2019) ........................... passim

Constitutional Provisions

U.S. Const. art. I, § 1 ............................... 7

U.S. Const. art. I, § 3, cl. 1 ...................... 7, 21

U.S. Const. art. I, § 5, cl. 3 ...................... 7, 21

U.S. Const. art. I, § 7, cl. 2 ...................... 5

U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 8 .................. ... passim

 ix
TABLE OF AUTHORITIES – cont’d
Page(s)
U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 7...................... 5

Statutes and Legislative Materials

5 U.S.C. § 7342 ........................................ 6

28 U.S.C. § 1254(1) ................................... 3

28 U.S.C. § 1292(b) ................................... 15

37 U.S.C. § 908 ........................................ 6

4 Stat. 792 (Feb. 13, 1835) ....................... 4

5 Stat. 730 (Mar. 1, 1845) ........................ 4

10 Stat. 830 (June 29, 1854) .................... 4

11 Stat. 152 (Aug. 30, 1856) .................... 4

20 Stat. 587 (Dec. 15, 1877) ..................... 4

21 Stat. 603 (Jan. 31, 1881) ..................... 4

29 Stat. 759 (Apr. 2, 1896) ....................... 4

40 Stat. 845 (July 9, 1918) ....................... 4

48 Stat. 1267 (June 27, 1934) .................. 4

56 Stat. 662 (July 20, 1942) ..................... 4

65 Stat. A148 (Oct. 30, 1951) ................... 4

72 Stat. A159 (Aug. 27, 1958) .................. 4

80 Stat. 1634 (July 4, 1966) ..................... 4

8 Annals of Cong. (1798) (Joseph Gales

ed., 1834) .............................................. 4, 6
 x
TABLE OF AUTHORITIES – cont’d
Page(s)
105 Cong. Rec. (daily ed. Apr. 28,
1959) ...................................................... 6

H.R. Rep. No. 21-170 (1830) .................... 4

H.R. Rep. No. 65-695 (1918) .................... 6

H. Journal, 5th Cong., 2d Sess. (1798) .... 5

H. Journal, 34th Cong., 1st Sess.

(1856) ..................................................... 6
2 The Records of the Federal Convention
of 1787 (Max Farrand ed., 1911) .......... 1, 3, 5

S. Rep. No. 61-373 (1910) ......................... 4

S. Journal, 26th Cong., 1st Sess.

(1840) ..................................................... 5

S. Journal, 37th Cong., 2d Sess.

(1862) ..................................................... 6

Books, Articles, and Other Authorities

Dan Alexander & Matt Drange, Trump’s
Biggest Potential Conflict of Interest Is
Hiding in Plain Sight, Forbes (Feb.
13, 2018) ................................................ 8, 28
David A. Fahrenthold & Jonathan
O’Connell, At President Trump’s Hotel
in New York, Revenue Went up This
Spring—Thanks to a Visit from Big-
Spending Saudis, Wash. Post (Aug. 3,
2018) ...................................................... 8
 xi
TABLE OF AUTHORITIES – cont’d
Page(s)
Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1), Twitter
(Oct. 21, 2019, 1:55 PM),
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/
1186340167193366529 ......................... 9

Julia Harte, Foreign Government Leases

at Trump World Tower Stir More
Emoluments Concerns, Reuters (May
2, 2019) ................................................. 8

Anita Kumar, Foreign Governments Are

Finding Ways To Do Favors for
Trump’s Business, McClatchy (Jan. 2,
2018) ..................................................... 8

Letter from James Madison to David

Humphreys (Jan. 5, 1803) ................... 4

4 John Bassett Moore, A Digest of

International Law (1906) ...................... 5
Jonathan O’Connell, From Trump Hotel
Lobby to White House, Malaysian
Prime Minister Gets VIP Treatment,
Wash. Post (Sept. 12, 2017) ................. 8
President Benjamin Harrison
(Oct. 14, 2012),
https://www.benjaminharrison.org/ ..... 6
 1
INTRODUCTION
The Foreign Emoluments Clause of the Constitu-
tion requires federal officials to obtain congressional
consent before accepting rewards from foreign states,
U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 8, a requirement the Framers
imposed because they recognized “the necessity” of en-
suring that officials remain “independent of external
influence,” 2 The Records of the Federal Convention of
1787, at 389 (Max Farrand ed., 1911) (hereinafter
“Records”). Since the eighteenth century, U.S. presi-
dents and other federal officials have obeyed the
Clause’s mandate by declining to accept rewards from
foreign states without prior consent.
President Trump, however, has been violating this
critical constitutional prohibition for his entire term in
office. By maintaining ownership of his companies
while they conduct business with foreign govern-
ments—without seeking or obtaining congressional
consent for these transactions—the President is ac-
cepting unauthorized financial benefits from foreign
states. His defense is that the Clause prohibits him
only from accepting fees for services that he personally
provides with his own labor, and that it imposes no
limit on the vast sums of money foreign governments
are paying him through his businesses for the services
of his employees. See Pet. App. 70-71.
Because President Trump is denying members of
Congress an institutional prerogative to which the
Constitution entitles them—the right to cast effective
votes on whether he may accept specific foreign emol-
uments before he accepts them—Petitioners filed suit,
seeking declaratory and injunctive relief preventing
the President from accepting foreign emoluments
without first obtaining congressional consent. In a
thorough opinion, the district court held that Petition-
ers have Article III standing, explaining that “the
 2
President’s complete nullification of plaintiffs’ votes is
entirely different from the ‘abstract dilution of legisla-
tive power’ alleged in Raines [v. Byrd, 521 U.S. 811
(1997)].” Pet. App. 46 (quoting Raines, 521 U.S. at
826).
The court of appeals reversed but did not engage
with the district court’s analysis. Instead, in a cursory
opinion, the court of appeals held that under Raines
“only an institution can assert an institutional injury,”
and that Petitioners lack standing because they “do
not constitute a majority” of the House or Senate. Id.
at 10-11. This new rule misunderstands the concept of
“institutional injury” articulated in Raines. And based
on that misunderstanding, it categorically prevents in-
dividual members of Congress from enforcing any of
their institutional prerogatives in court.
But since this Court first recognized institutional
injuries as cognizable in Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S.
433 (1939), it has been careful not to foreclose all
standing for individual members of Congress. Instead,
even as it has clarified that individual members enjoy
standing to sue only in narrow circumstances, it has
preserved their ability to seek judicial relief in at least
one situation: when their votes have been “completely
nullified.” Raines, 521 U.S. at 823. That is the case
here. By refusing to seek congressional consent before
accepting payments and other benefits from foreign
governments, President Trump is denying Petitioners
their right to cast specific votes on whether he may ac-
cept those benefits and to have their votes given effect.
The court of appeals, however, short-circuited this
analysis with its categorical new rule. Because its
shallow treatment of legislative standing departs from
this Court’s precedent, and because its decision under-
mines key safeguards of our constitutional structure,
review by this Court is imperative.
 3
OPINIONS AND ORDERS BELOW
The opinion of the court of appeals, Pet. App. 3, is
reported at 949 F.3d 14. The opinions of the district
court denying the motion to dismiss, Pet. App. 14 and
64, are reported at 335 F. Supp. 3d 45 and 373 F. Supp.
3d 191. The opinions of the district court addressing
interlocutory appeal, Pet. App. 105 and 118, are avail-
able at 382 F. Supp. 3d 77 and 2019 WL 3948478. The
orders of the court of appeals addressing interlocutory
appeal, Pet. App. 115 and 125, are available at 781
Fed. App’x 1 and 2019 WL 4200443.
JURISDICTION
The judgment of the court of appeals was entered
on February 7, 2020. This Court has jurisdiction pur-
suant to 28 U.S.C. § 1254(1).
CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISIONS INVOLVED
The Foreign Emoluments Clause provides:
No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the
United States: And no Person holding any
Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall,
without the Consent of the Congress, accept
of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title,
of any kind whatever, from any King,
Prince, or foreign State.
U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 8.
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
A. The Foreign Emoluments Clause
Recognizing that foreign states would “intermed-
dle in our affairs, and spare no expence to influence
them,” 2 Records at 268, the Framers fortified our na-
tional charter with safeguards against “foreign influ-
ence and corruption,” 1 id. at 289. Chief among them
is the Foreign Emoluments Clause. Reflecting “the
 4
necessity” of ensuring that federal officials remain “in-
dependent of external influence,” 2 id. at 389, the
Clause requires “the Consent of the Congress” before
an official accepts “any present, Emolument, Office, or
Title, of any kind whatever,” from any foreign state.
U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 8. In short, perceiving that
foreign rewards “opened an avenue to foreign influ-
ence,” 8 Annals of Cong. 1587 (1798) (Joseph Gales ed.,
1834), the Framers demanded that “every present . . .
be laid before Congress,” id. at 1585, and they vested
members of Congress with “the exclusive authority to
permit the acceptance of presents from foreign Gov-
ernments,” Letter from James Madison to David Hum-
phreys (Jan. 5, 1803).
The Foreign Emoluments Clause’s “sweeping and
unqualified” language, 18 Op. O.L.C. 13, 17 (1994), has
long been understood to require consent for even “tri-
fling presents,” 8 Annals of Cong. 1587, encompassing
rewards as diverse as jewelry, household luxuries, or-
namental novelties, medals, tokens of thankfulness,
symbolic military decorations, and compensation for
services provided. See, e.g., H.R. Rep. No. 21-170
(1830); 4 Stat. 792 (Feb. 13, 1835); 5 Stat. 730 (Mar. 1,
1845); 10 Stat. 830 (June 29, 1854); 11 Stat. 152 (Aug.
30, 1856); 20 Stat. 587 (Dec. 15, 1877); 21 Stat. 603,
604 (Jan. 31, 1881); 29 Stat. 759 (Apr. 2, 1896); S. Rep.
No. 61-373, at 2-20 (1910); 40 Stat. 845, 872 (July 9,
1918); 48 Stat. 1267 (June 27, 1934); 56 Stat. 662 (July
20, 1942); 65 Stat. A148 (Oct. 30, 1951); 72 Stat. A159
(Aug. 27, 1958); 80 Stat. 1634 (July 4, 1966).
While the Clause is severe, its language is clear.
And under that language, “[t]he decision whether to
permit exceptions that qualify the Clause’s absolute
prohibition or that temper any harshness it may cause
is textually committed to Congress.” 17 Op. O.L.C.
114, 121 (1993). Thus, in contrast with other
 5
constitutional prohibitions that give members of Con-
gress no special role to play, e.g., U.S. Const. art. II,
§ 1, cl. 7 (Domestic Emoluments Clause), the Framers
deliberately gave members of Congress an ongoing
procedural role in vetting foreign emoluments.
Equally deliberate was the Framers’ decision to re-
quire a prior act of affirmative congressional consent
before foreign emoluments may be accepted. The
Framers knew how to assign legal effect to an absence
of legislative action. See id. art. I, § 7, cl. 2 (bills pre-
sented to the President become law if not returned
within ten days); 2 Records at 80, 83 (declining to
adopt proposal that would allow appointments to take
effect unless the Senate voted to reject the nominee).
Eschewing that model, the Framers placed a formida-
ble burden on any official wishing to accept a foreign
reward: convince majorities in both Houses of Con-
gress to give their affirmative consent. See 4 John Bas-
sett Moore, A Digest of International Law 582 (1906)
(quoting 1834 message from the Secretary of State re-
minding diplomats not to accept foreign presents “un-
less the consent of Congress shall have been previously
obtained”).
The mechanism for complying with the Clause,
however, is straightforward: an official who wishes to
accept a foreign emolument simply writes to Congress
describing that benefit and seeking Congress’s direc-
tion. This procedure is long settled by historical prac-
tice. See, e.g., H. Journal, 5th Cong., 2d Sess. 275
(1798) (letter from ambassador requesting decision on
“whether he shall accept or decline the customary pre-
sents given, by [foreign] Courts, . . . which he has de-
clined receiving, without first having obtained the con-
sent of the Government of the United States”); S. Jour-
nal, 26th Cong., 1st Sess. 385 (1840) (letter from Pres-
ident Van Buren describing gifts offered to him and
 6
“deem[ing] it my duty to lay the proposition before
Congress”); H. Journal, 34th Cong., 1st Sess. 686-87
(1856) (letter from President Pierce requesting consent
for naval officers to accept gifts); S. Journal, 37th
Cong., 2d Sess. 243 (1862) (letter from President Lin-
coln reporting gifts offered to him and “submit[ting] for
. . . consideration the question as to the[ir] proper place
of deposit”); President Benjamin Harrison (Oct. 14,
2012), https://www.benjaminharrison.org/ (letter from
President Harrison requesting consent to accept two
medals, “[i]f it is appropriate that I should have
them”); H.R. Rep. No. 65-695, at 1 (1918) (letter from
President Wilson requesting consent for embassy offi-
cials to accept gifts); 105 Cong. Rec. 6879-80 (daily ed.
Apr. 28, 1959) (letter from Defense Secretary request-
ing consent for military officers to accept foreign deco-
rations).
When Congress wishes to approve an official’s re-
quest to accept a foreign emolument, or to give direc-
tion on that request, it passes a resolution or private
bill.1 And if Congress wishes to decline a request, it
can simply do nothing. Because acceptance requires
affirmative consent, inaction by either House func-
tions as a denial of that consent. See, e.g., 8 Annals of
Cong. 1593 (1798) (failure of resolution in House after
Senate passage); H.R. Rep. No. 65-695, at 5 (1918)
(noting that despite State Department recommenda-
tions to consent to gifts, “[i]t has not been the pleasure
of Congress to act favorably upon these recommenda-
tions”).

1 In addition, legislation can provide blanket consent for partic-

ular classes of benefits, e.g., 5 U.S.C. § 7342 (gifts of minimal

value and decorations); 37 U.S.C. § 908 (civil employment by for-
eign governments). Where blanket consent has not been given,
however, “any other emolument stands forbidden.” 6 Op. O.L.C.
156, 158 (1982).
 7
In sum, the procedure required by the Foreign
Emoluments Clause is textually clear and historically
settled. Before an official accepts an emolument from
a foreign state, he or she must obtain the affirmative
consent of Congress.
Congress “consist[s] of a Senate and House of Rep-
resentatives,” U.S. Const. art. I, § 1, and each member
of Congress has a right to vote on every matter that
comes before those bodies, see id. art. I, § 3, cl. 1 (“each
Senator shall have one Vote”); id. art. I, § 5, cl. 3 (re-
quiring the House and Senate to record “the Yeas and
Nays of the Members” upon request). The Constitu-
tion, therefore, entitles individual members of Con-
gress to vote on whether to consent to an official’s ac-
ceptance of a foreign emolument before he or she ac-
cepts it.
B. President Trump’s Violations
Since the eighteenth century, U.S. presidents and
other federal officials have obeyed the Foreign Emolu-
ments Clause’s clear mandate, either by seeking Con-
gress’s consent before accepting rewards from foreign
states or by declining to accept such rewards. See Pet.
App. 22-24.
Not President Trump. By maintaining ownership
of his companies while allowing them to conduct busi-
ness with foreign governments, the President is ac-
cepting payments and other financial benefits from
foreign states. Yet President Trump has not sought,
much less obtained, congressional consent for any of
these transactions. Instead, he has disregarded the
Constitution’s structural safeguard “against every
kind of influence by foreign governments upon officers
of the United States.” 10 Op. O.L.C. 96, 98 (1986)
(quoting 24 Op. Att’y Gen. 116, 117 (1902)).
The results are predictable. Foreign officials flock
 8
to the President’s hotels and resorts, reportedly paying
up to hundreds of thousands of dollars for celebrations
and blocks of rooms. Foreign ambassadors explain
that hosting events at Trump properties is “a state-
ment that we have a good relationship with this pres-
ident.”2 Prime ministers travel in motorcades from the
President’s Washington, D.C., hotel straight to the
White House to meet with him.3
And that is just the start. Foreign governments
are reportedly paying President Trump untold
amounts for rent and fees at his commercial and resi-
dential towers,4 many having signed leases soon after
he took office.5 Abroad, foreign states have granted
the President lucrative intellectual property rights,
Pet. App. 67, 121, and have “donated public land, ap-
proved permits and eased environmental regulations
for Trump-branded developments.”6 Rather than com-
ply with the Foreign Emoluments Clause before ac-
cepting these benefits, President Trump has dispar-
aged “you people with this phony Emoluments

2 David A. Fahrenthold & Jonathan O’Connell, At President

Trump’s Hotel in New York, Revenue Went up This Spring—

Thanks to a Visit from Big-Spending Saudis, Wash. Post (Aug. 3,
2018).
3 Jonathan O’Connell, From Trump Hotel Lobby to White
House, Malaysian Prime Minister Gets VIP Treatment, Wash.
Post (Sept. 12, 2017).
4 Dan Alexander & Matt Drange, Trump’s Biggest Potential

Conflict of Interest Is Hiding in Plain Sight, Forbes (Feb. 13,

2018).
5Julia Harte, Foreign Government Leases at Trump World
Tower Stir More Emoluments Concerns, Reuters (May 2, 2019).
6 Anita Kumar, Foreign Governments Are Finding Ways To Do

Favors for Trump’s Business, McClatchy (Jan. 2, 2018).

 9
Clause.”7
Worst of all, because the President is not seeking
congressional consent before accepting benefits from
foreign governments, the full range of those benefits—
and their sources—remain unknown.
Under the Constitution, each of these transactions
requires the prior consent of Congress. By engaging in
these transactions without seeking and obtaining the
prior approval of majorities in both Houses of Con-
gress, President Trump is denying Petitioners specific
votes to which they are constitutionally entitled. And
because Congress cannot adequately remedy this vio-
lation of Petitioners’ voting rights without the aid of
the courts, Petitioners filed suit in June 2017, seeking
a declaratory judgment that the President is violating
the Clause and an injunction ordering him to stop ac-
cepting foreign emoluments unless he first obtains
congressional consent. Pet. App. 6.
The President moved to dismiss Petitioners’ suit,
arguing among other things that Petitioners lack
standing. Id.
C. The District Court’s Decisions
In September 2018, the district court denied the
President’s motion in part, holding that Petitioners
have standing to maintain this action. Pet. App. 14.
The district court began by describing the dichot-
omy this Court recognized in Raines v. Byrd between
two categories of harms to individual legislators: “[A]n
individual Member of Congress . . . can allege either a
personal injury or an institutional injury.” Id. at 32;
accord Cummings v. Murphy, 321 F. Supp. 3d 92, 107

7 Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1), Twitter (Oct. 21, 2019, 1:55 PM),

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1186340167193366529.
 10
(D.D.C. 2018) (“[W]here suit is brought by individual
Members of Congress, Raines establishes a binary ru-
bric of potential injuries,” under which “the alleged in-
jury . . . is either personal or institutional.”); see Pet.
App. 27-30 (discussing Raines’s differentiation of Pow-
ell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486 (1969) (involving “per-
sonal injury”), from Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433
(1939) (involving “institutional injury”)). “If the injury
is personal, standing is present when the injury arises
out of something to which the member is personally
entitled, such as the salary associated with his or her
seat.” Pet. App. 32.
“As to an institutional injury,” the district court
continued, this Court “has recognized standing when a
legislator’s vote has been completely nullified.” Id.
(citing Raines, 521 U.S. at 823). That was the case in
Coleman v. Miller, where the plaintiffs were Kansas
state legislators whose votes on a measure had been
“overridden and virtually held for naught.” 307 U.S.
at 438.
While Coleman did not “implicate[] federal separa-
tion-of-powers concerns,” the district court explained,
“the Raines Court specifically declined to hold
that Coleman would be inapplicable ‘to a similar suit
brought by federal legislators.’” Pet. App. 33 (quoting
Raines, 521 U.S. at 824 n.8). Moreover, Coleman was
a case brought by individual legislators who did not
sue on behalf of their legislative body, but rather chal-
lenged the nullification of their own individual votes.
And this Court “reaffirmed Coleman in both Raines
and Arizona State Legislature [v. Arizona Independent
Redistricting Commission, 135 S. Ct. 2652 (2015)],
necessarily holding that the institutional injury al-
leged—vote nullification—was sufficiently personal to
each of the individual plaintiffs to satisfy the standing
requirement under Article III.” Id. at 40 (citing
 11
Raines, 521 U.S. at 821; Ariz. State Legislature, 135 S.
Ct. at 2665).
In sum, as the district court explained, this Court
“has recognized at least one type of institutional injury
for which legislators may have standing to sue: com-
plete vote nullification.” Id. at 40.
The district court also recognized that Raines,
which denied standing to several members of Congress
who sought to challenge the constitutionality of a fed-
eral law, did not discard vote nullification as a cogniza-
ble injury. “In Raines, plaintiffs sued after being on
the losing side of the vote that enacted the Line Item
Veto Act, alleging that their injury was the diminution
of legislative power caused by the Act.” Id. at 49 (cit-
ing Raines, 521 U.S. at 814). Upholding standing
there, the district court explained, “would have re-
quired a drastic extension of Coleman because the na-
ture of the vote nullification in Coleman was different
from the ‘abstract dilution of legislative power’ alleged
in Raines.” Id. at 46 (quoting Raines, 521 U.S. at 826);
accord Comm. on Oversight & Gov’t Reform v. Holder,
979 F. Supp. 2d 1, 13 (D.D.C. 2013) (noting that the
Raines plaintiffs “were simply complaining that the
Act would result in some abstract dilution of the power
of Congress as a whole” (quotation marks omitted)).
“Here, by contrast,” the district court explained,
“the President’s complete nullification of plaintiffs’
votes is entirely different from the ‘abstract dilution of
legislative power’ alleged in Raines.” Pet. App. 46.
Unlike Petitioners, “the Raines plaintiffs could not al-
lege that their votes had been nullified in the past; ra-
ther, they had simply lost the vote on the Act. And
the Raines plaintiffs could not allege that their votes
would be nullified in the future because they had a va-
riety of legislative remedies at their disposal.” Id. at
30 (citing Raines, 521 U.S. at 824).
 12
Significantly, as the district court emphasized,
Raines “did not hold that it would be necessary for an
institutional claim to be brought by or on behalf of the
institution.” Id. at 42. “Rather, the fact that the case
had not been authorized by the institution was a rele-
vant consideration, but not dispositive, in determining
that the Raines plaintiffs lacked standing.” Id.; accord
Raines, 521 U.S. at 829 (“We attach some importance
to the fact that appellees have not been authorized to
represent their respective Houses of Congress in this
action, and indeed both Houses actively oppose their
suit.” (emphasis added)); id. at 829-30 (“Whether the
case would be different if . . . th[is] circumstance[] were
different we need not now decide.”). Indeed, as the dis-
trict court also observed, “the claim in Coleman was
not brought on behalf of the state senate as an institu-
tional plaintiff, but rather by a bloc of individual mem-
bers who had voted not to ratify the constitutional
amendment.” Pet. App. 42 (citing Coleman, 307 U.S.
at 438); accord Raines, 521 U.S. at 821 (describing
Coleman as a case “in which we have upheld standing
for legislators (albeit state legislators) claiming an in-
stitutional injury”). And while this Court subse-
quently “distinguished Raines from Arizona State Leg-
islature because the latter was brought by the legisla-
ture as an institution,” Arizona likewise “did not hold
that an institutional claim may be brought only by the
institution.” Pet. App. 42 (citing Ariz. State Legisla-
ture, 135 S. Ct. at 2664).
The district court therefore recognized that when
legislators’ votes are allegedly nullified Raines permits
those individual legislators to sue to protect their own
individual votes. Accord Cummings, 321 F. Supp. 3d
at 105 (“Complete vote nullification is clearly a type of
an institutional injury . . . . that grants individual leg-
islators standing to seek redress consistent with
 13
Raines.” (citations omitted)).
The district court went on to discuss post-Raines
precedent from the D.C. Circuit. In Campbell v. Clin-
ton, 203 F.3d 19 (D.C. Cir. 2000), the district court ex-
plained, the D.C. Circuit “understood vote nullification
‘to mean treating a vote that did not pass as if it had,
or vice versa.’” Pet. App. 38 (quoting Campbell, 203
F.3d at 22). And in Chenoweth v. Clinton, 181 F.3d
112 (D.C. Cir. 1999), the Circuit “suggested that not-
withstanding Raines, a single Member of Congress
could have standing to sue based on a vote nullification
claim when it was the President’s action, rather than
‘a lack of legislative support,’ that nullified the Mem-
ber’s vote.” Id. at 38 (quoting Chenoweth, 181 F.3d at
117). But under both decisions, the district court em-
phasized, “individual Members of Congress do not
have standing to sue the Executive Branch when their
institutional injury is such that they can obtain their
remedy in Congress.” Id. at 38.
Applying this precedent, the district court held
that Petitioners have standing to allege that President
Trump has completely nullified their votes under the
Foreign Emoluments Clause: “Accepting the allega-
tions in the Complaint as true, . . . the President is ac-
cepting prohibited foreign emoluments without asking
and without receiving a favorable reply from Con-
gress,” thereby “depriving plaintiffs of the opportunity
to give or withhold their consent” through their votes.
Id. at 40-41. As the district court explained,
“[p]laintiffs adequately allege that the President has
completely nullified their votes in the past because he
has accepted prohibited foreign emoluments as though
Congress had provided its consent.” Id. at 41. And the
President “will completely nullify their votes in the fu-
ture for the same reason, as plaintiffs allege that he
intends to continue this practice.” Id. at 41-42.
 14
Moreover, the district court noted that “although the
injury is an institutional one, the injury is personal to
legislators entitled to cast the vote that was nullified.”
Id. at 47.
Notably, the district court “agree[d] with the Pres-
ident that, ‘when legislators possess political tools
with which to remedy their purported injury, they may
not seek the aid of the Judiciary.’” Id. at 50 (quoting
motion to dismiss). But the district court discussed at
length why, unlike the plaintiffs in Raines, Petitioners
“have no adequate legislative remedies.” Id. at 46; see
id. at 50-54. “Accordingly, although this case impli-
cates separation-of-powers concerns, finding standing
here ‘keep[s] the Judiciary’s power within its proper
constitutional sphere.’” Id. at 59 (quoting Raines, 521
U.S. at 820).
In April 2019, the district court denied the Presi-
dent’s motion to dismiss in full after addressing the re-
mainder of his arguments for dismissal. Id. at 63. The
district court held that Petitioners have stated a plau-
sible claim against President Trump for violating the
Foreign Emoluments Clause. Rejecting the Presi-
dent’s defense that the Clause does not cover pay-
ments from business transactions, the district court
concluded that “the weight of the evidence in founding-
era dictionaries and other contemporaneous sources”
supports Petitioners’ contrary interpretation, a result
confirmed by the “surrounding text, structure, adop-
tion, historical interpretation, and purpose of the
Clause, as well as Executive Branch practice.” Id. at
76 (quotation marks omitted); accord District of Co-
lumbia v. Trump, 315 F. Supp. 3d 875 (D. Md. 2018).
The district court also held that Petitioners have an
equitable cause of action to seek prospective relief from
President Trump’s violations, and that while “[judi-
cial] restraint is appropriate,” such relief is
 15
constitutionally permissible to enforce the ministerial
duty of “seeking congressional consent prior to accept-
ing prohibited foreign emoluments.” Pet. App. 102-03
(citing Franklin v. Massachusetts, 505 U.S. 788, 802
(1992), and Swan v. Clinton, 100 F.3d 973, 977 (D.C.
Cir. 1996)).
D. The Court of Appeals’ Decisions
In June 2019, the district court denied the Presi-
dent’s motion to certify its orders for immediate inter-
locutory appeal, finding that an immediate appeal
would not likely “materially advance the ultimate ter-
mination of the litigation,” 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b), be-
cause the parties had proposed filing cross motions for
summary judgment within six months. Pet. App. 110.
President Trump then sought a writ of mandamus
from the court of appeals directing the district court to
dismiss Petitioners’ complaint or, in the alternative, to
certify the district court’s orders for interlocutory ap-
peal. Id. at 115.
A motions panel of the court of appeals denied the
President’s mandamus petition without prejudice in
July 2019. See id. at 115-16. Recognizing that “the
standing question arises at the intersection of prece-
dent,” id. at 116 (citing Coleman and Virginia House
of Delegates v. Bethune-Hill, 139 S. Ct. 1945 (2019)),
the court of appeals concluded that the President
failed to demonstrate his right to dismissal of Petition-
ers’ complaint. However, the court of appeals also con-
cluded that the district court’s orders met the criteria
for certification under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b). Id. at 115.
It therefore remanded the case for reconsideration of
the President’s motion to certify those orders. Id. at
117. On remand, the district court certified its orders
for interlocutory appeal and stayed its proceedings.
Id. at 118. The court of appeals then granted the in-
terlocutory appeal. Id. at 125.
 16
In February 2020, the court of appeals reversed
the district court and remanded with instructions to
dismiss the complaint. Id. at 13. “This case is really
no different from Raines,” the court wrote, because Pe-
titioners’ claim “is based entirely on the loss of political
power.” Id. at 9. The court of appeals did not explain
why depriving Petitioners of the opportunity to vote on
specific transactions with foreign governments is
equivalent to an “abstract dilution” of congressional
power. Raines, 521 U.S. at 826.
Instead, the court of appeals stated that Petition-
ers lack standing because they do “not constitute a ma-
jority of either body,” Pet. App. 11; id. (“the Members’
inability to act determinatively is important”), and
that “only an institution can assert an institutional in-
jury provided the injury is not ‘wholly abstract and
widely dispersed.’” Id. at 10-11 (quoting Raines, 521
U.S. at 829). The court of appeals did not explain how
a claim brought by an institution could be “widely dis-
persed,” a description that makes sense only when ap-
plied, as it was in Raines, to claims brought by the in-
dividual members of an institution. The incongruity
of the court of appeals’ statement reveals its basic mis-
understanding of Raines, which denied standing to in-
dividual members of Congress because the specific
claims they brought were both “wholly abstract and
widely dispersed,” Raines, 521 U.S. at 829, not because
“only an institution can assert an institutional injury,”
Pet. App. 10. The court of appeals discussed Coleman
in a two-sentence footnote. Id. at 11 n.3.
According to the court of appeals, its holding
rested largely on this Court’s “recent summary read-
ing of Raines” in Bethune-Hill. Id. at 10. Because Pe-
titioners are claiming an “institutional” injury rather
than a personal or private injury, the court wrote, they
“concededly seek to do precisely what Bethune-Hill
 17
forbids”—that is, “‘assert interests belonging to the
legislature as a whole.’” Id. (quoting Bethune-Hill, 39
S. Ct. at 1953-54). Apparently, the court of appeals
understood the term “institutional injury” as meaning
injury to the legislature as a whole. But see Raines,
521 U.S. at 820-21 & n.4 (explaining that for individ-
ual legislators like those in Coleman, an “institutional
injury” means an “injury to their institutional power
as legislators”).
The court of appeals also stated in a footnote, with-
out elaboration, that “[o]ur own precedent confirms
that the Members lack standing.” Pet. App. 12 n.5 (cit-
ing Chenoweth v. Clinton, 181 F.3d 112, and Campbell
v. Clinton, 203 F.3d 19).
REASONS FOR GRANTING THE PETITION
I. The Decision Below Departs from This
Court’s Precedent by Eliminating Standing
for Individual Legislators When Their Votes
Are Completely Nullified.
This Court’s decisions on legislative standing have
established three propositions. First, individual legis-
lators have standing when their votes are completely
nullified. Coleman, 307 U.S. at 438. Second, a legis-
lative body has standing when it is deprived of one of
its powers. Ariz. State Legislature, 135 S. Ct. at 2665.
Third, notwithstanding those first two propositions,
individual legislators and the subcomponents of a leg-
islature lack standing to assert interests that are pos-
sessed only by the legislature as a whole. Raines, 521
U.S. at 829-30; Bethune-Hill, 139 S. Ct. at 1950.
Under these principles, Petitioners have standing
to sue. The decision below held to the contrary only by
departing from these principles and eliminating com-
plete vote nullification as a basis for standing. Rea-
soning that “only an institution can assert an
 18
institutional injury,” Pet. App. 10, the decision below
essentially imposed a categorical bar on individual leg-
islators seeking judicial relief from “injury to their in-
stitutional power as legislators.” Raines, 521 U.S. at
820 n.4. This Court has never taken that step. To the
contrary, it carefully preserved that avenue for law-
makers in Raines. And Bethune-Hill—which did not
even involve alleged vote nullification or individual
legislators—did not foreclose it either. The court of ap-
peals erred in concluding otherwise. By foreclosing
standing for individual legislators, the decision below
eliminates an important structural safety valve that
this Court has been careful to preserve.
A. Every time President Trump accepts a foreign
emolument without Congress’s prior consent, he is
denying Petitioners their right to cast an effective vote
on whether he may accept that emolument. Although
this Court has narrowed the circumstances in which
individual legislators may sue over harms to their of-
ficial powers, there is one type of “institutional injury”
that individual legislators can vindicate in court: com-
plete vote nullification. Raines, 521 U.S. at 823 (quot-
ing Coleman, 307 U.S. at 438).
This Court first recognized vote nullification as a
cognizable injury in Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433.
In Coleman, Kansas officials treated a federal consti-
tutional amendment as having been ratified by the
state senate even though, according to the plaintiffs,
the senate had not approved the amendment. This
Court concluded that those actions inflicted an “insti-
tutional injury” on the plaintiffs—legislators who had
voted against the amendment—because their votes
were “deprived of all validity,” and that the legislators
therefore had standing to sue. See Raines, 521 U.S. at
821-22. This Court has repeatedly reaffirmed Cole-
man. See, e.g., Ariz. State Legislature, 135 S. Ct. at
 19
2665 & n.13 (confirming “the precedential weight
of Coleman” and relying on its vote-nullification ra-
tionale); Raines, 521 U.S. at 826 (reaffirming Cole-
man); cf. Bethune-Hill, 139 S. Ct. at 1954 (distinguish-
ing Coleman).
As this Court has made clear, vote nullification oc-
curs both when a past vote is unlawfully disregarded
and when the right to cast an effective vote is unlaw-
fully denied. In Raines, for example, in holding that
the plaintiffs had not experienced vote nullification
and therefore lacked standing, this Court emphasized
not only that the plaintiffs’ past votes were “given full
effect” during the passage of the Line Item Veto Act,
but also that the Act would not “nullify their votes in
the future.” Raines, 521 U.S. at 824. In Arizona State
Legislature, this Court confirmed what Raines sug-
gested: unlawful vote denial is a form of vote nullifica-
tion. Arizona held that a legislature could challenge a
ballot measure that took away its redistricting power
because the measure “would ‘completely nullif[y]’ any
vote by the Legislature, now or ‘in the future,’ purport-
ing to adopt a redistricting plan.” 135 S. Ct. at 2665
(quoting Raines, 521 U.S. at 823-24). Finally, in Be-
thune-Hill, as in Raines, this Court denied standing in
part because the purported injury did not deprive the
plaintiff of any future voting power. Bethune-Hill, 139
S. Ct. at 1954.
While suits by federal legislators like Petitioners
raise “separation-of-powers concerns,” Raines, 521
U.S. at 824 n.8; accord Ariz. State Legislature, 135 S.
Ct. at 2665 n.12, this Court has never held that those
concerns foreclose members of Congress from seeking
judicial relief. Indeed, this Court expressly declined to
dismiss the plaintiffs’ claims in Raines on that basis.
See 521 U.S. at 824 n.8. The D.C. Circuit has long ad-
dressed these separation-of-powers concerns by
 20
mandating dismissal of any suit brought by members
of Congress when Congress as a whole has the power
to remedy the members’ grievance. See Chenoweth,
181 F.3d at 116. This Court endorsed that principle in
Raines. See Campbell, 203 F.3d at 24 (“Raines[] fo-
cus[ed] on the political self-help available to congress-
men. . . . [T]he Court denied [the plaintiffs] standing
as congressmen because they possessed political tools
with which to remedy their purported injury.”).
President Trump’s denial of Petitioners’ right to
vote under the Foreign Emoluments Clause consti-
tutes complete vote nullification that Petitioners have
standing to challenge. As the district court recognized,
each time the President accepts financial rewards
from foreign states “as though Congress has provided
its consent,” he is “‘treating a vote that did not pass as
if it had.’” Pet. App. 41-42 (quoting Campbell, 203 F.3d
at 22). And because President Trump is violating the
Clause through his private businesses, rather than
through government agencies over which Congress
could exert control, Petitioners “have no adequate leg-
islative remedies.” Id.
B. In reversing the district court’s decision, the
court of appeals misapplied Raines and overlooked the
careful limits of its holding.
In Raines, this Court reversed a lower court’s rul-
ing that members of Congress could challenge the Line
Item Veto Act because it allegedly “dilute[d]” their
power and “affect[ed]” their duties by changing “the
dynamic of lawmaking.” Byrd v. Raines, 956 F. Supp.
25, 30-31 (D.D.C. 1997); see Raines, 521 U.S. at 825
(quoting plaintiffs’ argument that “the ‘meaning’ and
‘integrity’ of their vote ha[d] changed”). This Court re-
jected the “drastic extension of Coleman” that would
be necessary to recognize standing based on that
claim. Raines, 521 U.S. at 826. When the Act was
 21
passed, the Court explained, the plaintiffs’ votes “were
given full effect. They simply lost that vote.” Id. at
824. Nor would the Act “nullify their votes in the fu-
ture.” Id. Because no past votes were disregarded and
no future votes denied, Coleman provided “little mean-
ingful precedent” for the plaintiffs’ argument: “There
is a vast difference between the level of vote nullifica-
tion at issue in Coleman and the abstract dilution of
institutional legislative power that is alleged here.”
Id. at 824, 826. While Congress may have lost clout,
no rights of individual lawmakers were impaired.
“None of the plaintiffs, therefore, could tenably claim
a ‘personal stake’ in the suit.” Ariz. State Legislature,
135 S. Ct. at 2664 (quoting Raines, 521 U.S. at 830).
Here, by contrast, Petitioners are being deprived
of specific votes to which the Constitution entitles
them. As in Coleman, they seek to maintain the effec-
tiveness of their own individual votes—not to chal-
lenge an “abstract dilution” of Congress’s power, as in
Raines, 521 U.S. at 826. Congress cannot give the
“Consent” that the Foreign Emoluments Clause re-
quires, U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 8, without first having
the opportunity to vote on the matter in both of its
chambers. And the Constitution guarantees each Sen-
ator and Representative the right to vote on every mat-
ter that comes before those bodies. See id. art. I, § 3,
cl. 1; id. art. I, § 5, cl. 3. Thus, under the Constitution,
Petitioners are entitled to vote on whether to consent
to the President’s acceptance of specific foreign emolu-
ments before he accepts them. Petitioners, therefore,
are not attempting to vindicate the interests of Con-
gress any more than the Coleman plaintiffs sought to
vindicate those of the Kansas legislature. Rather than
trying to redress an injury to the body in which they
serve, Petitioners are trying to redress an injury to
their own individual voting rights.
 22
The decision below did not explain why Raines
“plainly applies here” despite these differences. Pet.
App. 10. Its only attempt at doing so was to observe
that Petitioners are not being “singled out.” Id. at 9.
But that is no reason for rejecting a claim of institu-
tional injury under Raines. In the passage of Raines
to which the court of appeals referred, this Court was
explaining why the plaintiffs’ alleged injury did not fit
the mold of Powell v. McCormack, where a Congress-
man was “singled out for specially unfavorable treat-
ment as opposed to other Members” concerning a “pri-
vate right.” Raines, 521 U.S. at 821 (citing Powell, 395
U.S. at 496, 512-14). When this Court later addressed
“institutional injury,” it distinguished the plaintiffs’
claims from the claims in Coleman on the entirely dif-
ferent grounds described above, without suggesting
that vote nullification requires a legislator to be sin-
gled out. See id. at 821-26.
At bottom, the court below simply misunderstood
the distinction Raines drew between “institutional in-
jury,” on the one hand, and “personal injury,” on the
other. Under Raines, “personal injuries” are based on
the deprivation of legislators’ “private rights,” as in
Powell (involving a Congressman’s salary), while “in-
stitutional” injuries are based on harm to their “insti-
tutional power as legislators.” Raines, 521 U.S. at
820-21 & n.4. Contrary to Raines, the court below as-
sumed that vindicating an “institutional injury” neces-
sarily means asserting the rights of a legislative body.
Pet. App. 10 (stating that Plaintiffs “concededly” seek
to “assert interests belonging to the legislature as a
whole” simply because they acknowledge they are not
vindicating a “private right” (quotation marks omit-
ted)). But that is wrong: “The one case in which [this
Court] ha[s] upheld standing for legislators . . . claim-
ing an institutional injury is Coleman,” Raines, 521
 23
U.S. at 821, and the Coleman plaintiffs were not as-
serting the rights of their legislature. Instead, as in-
dividual members who had voted against a legislative
measure, they sought to “maintain[] the effectiveness
of their votes.” Coleman, 307 U.S. at 438.
Claims of institutional injury, therefore, can be
brought to assert the rights of legislative bodies or of
individual legislators. When brought by individuals,
some injuries are cognizable (as in Coleman) while oth-
ers are not (as in Raines), just as when claims are
brought by legislative bodies, some injuries are cog-
nizable (as in Arizona State Legislature), while others
are not (as in Bethune-Hill).
Remarkably, the entire discussion of Coleman in
the decision below is a short footnote, which merely as-
serts that Coleman is “inapposite” because it “‘stands
(at most) for the proposition that legislators whose
votes would have been sufficient to defeat (or enact) a
specific legislative Act have standing to sue if that leg-
islative action goes into effect (or does not go into ef-
fect), on the ground that their votes have been com-
pletely nullified.’” Pet. App. 11 n.3 (quoting Raines,
521 U.S. at 823 (emphasis added and citation omitted
by the court of appeals)).
As Petitioners explained below, however, that
statement addresses scenarios like in Coleman, where
legislators claim that votes they have already cast
were unlawfully disregarded. After all, when legisla-
tors assert that the result of a prior vote was overrid-
den, the only basis for claiming nullification is that the
majority’s will was thwarted, and so a showing of ma-
jority support is essential. But when legislators are
denied their right to vote entirely, the denial itself de-
prives their votes “of all validity,” Raines, 521 U.S. at
822, regardless of what the result might have been.
For instance, if the defendants in Coleman had simply
 24
deemed the constitutional amendment ratified with-
out submitting it for a vote, that would have injured
the plaintiffs no less than allowing them to go through
the motions of voting but then ignoring the outcome.
In both situations, the harm is the same: legislators
are denied the right to cast a vote that is given legal
effect.8
Indeed, this Court in Raines expressly contem-
plated that, in a proper case, vote deprivation affecting
less than a majority of members can be a cognizable
injury. See id. at 824 n.7 (declining to address scenar-
ios “in which first-term Members were not allowed to
vote on appropriations bills, or in which every Member
was disqualified . . . from voting on major federal pro-
jects in his or her own district” (quotation marks omit-
ted)). If Raines had confined institutional injuries to
legislative bodies, or to members who make up a ma-
jority of their legislative body, it would not have
needed to defer questions about these hypotheticals in
which smaller numbers of legislators are deprived of
their votes. This Court’s decision not to resolve such
questions is incompatible with the holding below—
that Raines forecloses standing for anything less than
a majority of members. Raines rejected “a drastic ex-
tension of Coleman,” id. at 826 (emphasis added), not
any extension of its rationale.
The decision below addressed none of this. In-
stead, it cast doubt on whether Coleman “survives”

8 Importantly, this Court’s use of the caveat “at most” in de-

scribing what Coleman stands for, Raines, 521 U.S. at 823, was
not meant to suggest that vote nullification is limited to Cole-
man’s precise situation. Rather, as explained in the accompany-
ing footnote, this caveat simply recognizes the possibility that
Coleman might not apply to federal legislators. See Raines, 521
U.S. at 824 n.8.
 25
Raines, Pet. App. 11 n.3, even though this Court ex-
pressly reaffirmed “the precedential weight of Cole-
man” five years ago, Ariz. State Legislature, 135 S. Ct.
at 2665 n.13, and took pains to distinguish Coleman
just last year, see Bethune-Hill, 139 S. Ct. at 1954. See
also Ariz. State Legislature, 135 S. Ct. at 2665 n.13
(chiding the dissent’s effort “to wish away Coleman”).
C. In support of its overbroad reading of Raines,
the court below relied almost entirely on one sentence
in Bethune-Hill, a case that did not involve individual
legislators or alleged vote nullification: “Just as indi-
vidual members lack standing to assert the institu-
tional interests of a legislature, . . . a single House of a
bicameral legislature lacks capacity to assert interests
belonging to the legislature as a whole.” Bethune-Hill,
139 S. Ct. at 1953-54; see Pet. App. 10 (quoting this
sentence). According to the court below, this “sum-
mary reading of Raines” confirms that individual leg-
islators cannot sue over the complete nullification of
their votes. Id.
As this Court’s decisions make clear, however, leg-
islators challenging vote nullification are not asserting
interests belonging to the legislature as a whole, but
rather are seeking to maintain the effectiveness of
their own individual votes. Here, Petitioners allege
that President Trump has completely nullified their
individual votes—not that he has inflicted a cognizable
injury on the House, the Senate, or Congress as a
whole. See supra.
Critically, too, this Court emphasized in Bethune-
Hill that vote nullification was not at issue. The Vir-
ginia House of Delegates had been permitted to play
its full role in the passage of the legislation in question.
“Unlike Coleman,” therefore, the Court reasoned that
“this case does not concern the results of a legislative
chamber’s poll or the validity of any counted or
 26
uncounted vote. At issue here, instead, is the consti-
tutionality of a concededly enacted redistricting plan.”
Id. at 1954. And just as no vote was disregarded in the
past, none would be impaired in the future, because
“the challenged order does not alter the General As-
sembly’s dominant initiating and ongoing role in redis-
tricting.” Id.
Instead, the House of Delegates sought to vindi-
cate an institutional interest never before recognized:
a legislative chamber’s ongoing interest in the legal
status of a measure it helped pass. But this Court has
“never held that a judicial decision invalidating a state
law as unconstitutional inflicts a discrete, cognizable
injury on each organ of government that participated
in the law’s passage.” Bethune-Hill, 139 S. Ct. at 1953.
There was simply “no support for the notion that one
House of a bicameral legislature, resting solely on its
role in the legislative process, may appeal on its own
behalf a judgment invalidating a state enactment.” Id.
By contrast, this Court has held that legislators are
injured by the complete nullification of their votes
(Coleman), and that nullification can include the un-
lawful denial of an effective future vote (Arizona State
Legislature).9
The House of Delegates, in short, sought to assert
an interest belonging to the larger body of which it was
a part, without showing any harm to its own individual

9 Consistent with Bethune-Hill, Petitioners have acknowledged

that once members of Congress fulfill their role in enacting legis-

lation, they have no special interest in its ongoing enforcement.
See Hollingsworth v. Perry, 570 U.S. 693, 706-07 (2013) (distin-
guishing the “‘unique,’ ‘special,’ and ‘distinct’ role” that a legisla-
tive participant enjoys during “the process of enacting the law”
from the lack of any special role after the law is “duly enacted”
(quotation marks omitted)); Bowsher v. Synar, 478 U.S. 714, 733
(1986) (same).
 27
prerogatives. This was the same type of “mismatch”
that existed in Raines, where members of Congress al-
leged that the Line Item Veto Act “alter[ed] the consti-
tutional balance of powers between the Legislative and
Executive Branches,” 521 U.S. at 816, without show-
ing any harm to their own individual prerogatives. See
supra. The similarity of this “mismatch” prompted the
Court to liken the two cases: “Just as individual mem-
bers lack standing to assert the institutional interests
of a legislature, a single House of a bicameral legisla-
ture lacks capacity to assert interests belonging to the
legislature as a whole.” Id. at 1953-54 (citing Raines,
521 U.S. at 829).
The decision below ignored the context of this sen-
tence, quoting it in isolation for the proposition that
legislators who make up less than a majority of their
body may not sue over the complete nullification of
their votes. Pet. App. 10-11. Yet the decision below
offered no justification, and cited no precedent, for the
premise that forms the crux of its conclusion: that
challenging the nullification of a lawmaker’s vote
means “assert[ing] the institutional interests of a leg-
islature.” Id. at 10. Based on that unsupported as-
sumption, which is nowhere to be found in this Court’s
decisions, the court below ordered the dismissal of Pe-
titioners’ claims.
II. The Issues at Stake Are Exceptionally
Important.
The significant ramifications of the decision below
make this Court’s review imperative. By essentially
imposing a categorical bar on individual members of
Congress seeking judicial relief for complete vote nul-
lification by the executive, even when Congress as a
whole is powerless to remedy the injury through legis-
lative action, the decision below eliminates an im-
portant safety valve for maintaining our constitutional
 28
structure—one that this Court has carefully preserved
in its prior decisions. As a result of the decision below,
the Foreign Emoluments Clause—a critical safeguard
against foreign corruption of America’s leaders—no
longer functions as the Framers prescribed.10
A. Even as this Court narrowed the availability of
standing for individual members of Congress in
Raines, it preserved the possibility that members
could seek judicial relief if their own votes were com-
pletely nullified. See Chenoweth, 181 F.3d at 117 (ex-
plaining that under Raines, members of Congress
could have standing where they can “plausibly de-
scribe the President’s action as a complete nullification
of their votes”); Campbell, 203 F.3d at 22 (noting that
in Raines, this Court “emphasized that the congress-
men were not asserting that their votes had been ‘com-
pletely nullified’” (quoting Raines, 521 U.S. at 824)).
The decision below, however, prevents individual
members of Congress from enforcing any of their insti-
tutional prerogatives in court, even when the execu-
tive branch has completely nullified their votes and
Congress as a whole can provide no adequate remedy.
The decision thus closes the door on any suits by

10 Although two other pending suits involve the President’s un-

lawful acceptance of emoluments, those suits relate exclusively to

his D.C. and New York hotels and restaurants. They cannot lead
to judicial orders covering the President’s other hotels and re-
sorts, payments to his skyscrapers (the source of “[t]he real money
in the Trump empire,” Alexander & Drange, supra), his ac-
ceptance of foreign trademarks, or the regulatory favors conferred
on his business ventures abroad. In other words, with respect to
the vast majority of President Trump’s alleged foreign emolu-
ments, the decision below “forecloses the[m] . . . from constitu-
tional challenge.” Raines, 521 U.S. at 829. But see id. at 829-30
(declining to decide whether Raines’s holding “would be different”
if no one else could challenge the Line Item Veto Act).
 29
individual legislators seeking to uphold the Constitu-
tion’s procedural requirements. “If [this] Court had
meant to do away with legislative standing” in Raines,
however, “it would have said so and it would have
given reasons for taking that step.” Campbell, 203
F.3d at 32 (Randolph, J., concurring in the judgment).
Instead, this Court meticulously avoided taking that
step.
So did the D.C. Circuit—until the decision below.
After Raines, the Circuit twice addressed suits by in-
dividual members of Congress alleging institutional
injuries, and in neither case did the Circuit adopt the
categorical bar on standing adopted by the decision be-
low. Construing Raines and Coleman, the Circuit in-
terpreted vote “nullification” to mean “treating a vote
that did not pass as if it had, or vice versa,” in the “un-
usual situation” where there is no “legislative rem-
edy.” Campbell, 203 F.3d at 22-23. Under that restric-
tive standard, members of Congress can have standing
only where Congress as a whole cannot redress the in-
terference with their votes. See id. at 23 (dismissing
suit for failure to make that showing); Chenoweth, 181
F.3d at 116 (similar).
Before the decision below, therefore, standing for
individual members was already sharply circum-
scribed: even if members could show that their votes
were unlawfully denied or disregarded, they also had
to show that Congress could not adequately solve the
problem itself. See, e.g., Campbell, 203 F.3d at 23 (re-
jecting suit over military strikes because “Congress
has a broad range of legislative authority it can use to
stop a President’s war making”); Kucinich v. Bush, 236
F. Supp. 2d 1, 10 (D.D.C. 2002) (rejecting suit because
Congress could address the alleged problem using its
appropriations power); Kucinich v. Obama, 821 F.
Supp. 2d 110, 119 (D.D.C. 2011) (same).
 30
As narrow as that standard was, it preserved a
critical caveat: in an extreme case—where unlawful
executive action completely negates the votes of mem-
bers of Congress, and where no political remedy is ad-
equate—legislators could turn to the courts to vindi-
cate their institutional prerogatives and maintain the
procedural requirements on which our constitutional
structure rests. The decision below eliminated that
possibility.
B. The circumstances of this case illustrate the
harms of eliminating that safety valve. The Foreign
Emoluments Clause is one of the few constitutional
provisions that impose a specific procedural require-
ment (obtain “the Consent of the Congress”) before fed-
eral officials may take a specific action (accept “any”
emolument from “any . . . foreign State”). U.S. Const.
art. I, § 9, cl. 8; see Pet. App. 41 n.8 (identifying the
Article II requirement of Senate consent for appoint-
ments and treaties as “[t]he only similar provision”).
Among these provisions, only the Foreign Emoluments
Clause employs a congressional “consent” requirement
to regulate officials’ private behavior. Because Presi-
dent Trump is violating the Clause through his private
businesses, Congress cannot block his actions through
its appropriations power—normally the “ultimate
weapon of enforcement available to the Congress.”
United States v. Richardson, 418 U.S. 166, 178 n.11
(1974). Without that tool or any other effective means
of forcing President Trump to conform his conduct to
the Clause’s requirements, Petitioners have no ade-
quate legislative remedy for the President’s denial of
their voting rights. See Pet. App. 50-54.
As a result, for more than three years, the nation’s
highest officeholder has been making critical foreign
policy decisions under a cloud of potentially divided
loyalty caused by his enrichment from foreign states—
 31
the scope of which remains unknown. See supra at 8-9.
That is precisely what the Constitution’s Framers
tried to prevent. The Framers empowered presidents
to make “the most sensitive and far-reaching decisions
entrusted to any official under our constitutional sys-
tem,” Nixon v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 731, 752 (1982), but
recognizing the existential threat of foreign corrup-
tion, they adopted the Foreign Emoluments Clause to
shield presidents and other federal officials from the
possibility of undue foreign-government influence.
By accepting financial rewards from foreign states
in secret, President Trump is defying the Framers’ de-
sign and depriving the American people of assurance
that their highest elected official is pursuing their in-
terests with undivided loyalty. Neither the President
nor the Justice Department has explained why the
Foreign Emoluments Clause would prevent a federal
employee from accepting $150 to review a Ph.D. thesis,
see 18 Op. O.L.C. at 17 (citing Memorandum for
H. Gerald Staub, Office of Chief Counsel, NASA, from
Samuel A. Alito, Jr., Deputy Assistant Attorney Gen-
eral, Office of Legal Counsel, Re: Emoluments Clause
Questions Raised by NASA Scientist’s Proposed Con-
sulting Arrangement with the University of New South
Wales (May 23, 1986)), but would allow the President
to accept millions of dollars through his business em-
pire, in secret, from an unknown range of foreign
states.
The Framers designed the Clause as a default pro-
hibition under which Congress’s failure to act func-
tions as a denial of consent to accept foreign emolu-
ments. The decision below, however, requires the
House or Senate, acting as a legislative body, to join
any legal challenge to a president’s alleged acceptance
of foreign emoluments—without knowing what those
emoluments are or which foreign states may have
 32
provided them. The result, in effect, is to rewrite the
Foreign Emoluments Clause, inverting its structure
and converting legislative roadblocks into an ally of
foreign corruption instead of an enemy.
For the Foreign Emoluments Clause to retain its
value as a prophylactic safeguard against even the
possibility of foreign corruption—and to ensure that
when our leaders are making sensitive foreign policy
decisions, they are considering only what they believe
to be the nation’s best interest—members of Congress
must be able to vindicate their right to vote on whether
to approve specific emoluments before the President
accepts them, as the Constitution requires. Preserv-
ing that structure is more critical to the nation’s wel-
fare, not less, during times when fewer than a majority
of Congress’s members are willing to challenge the
President’s actions in court. As illustrated by Presi-
dent Trump’s increasingly defiant disregard of the
Clause, the decision below is a recipe for impunity and
for foreign interference with our democratic system.
 33
CONCLUSION
The petition for a writ of certiorari should be
granted.
Respectfully submitted,
ELIZABETH B. WYDRA
BRIANNE J. GOROD*
BRIAN R. FRAZELLE
CONSTITUTIONAL
ACCOUNTABILITY CENTER
1200 18th Street NW, Suite 501
Washington, D.C. 20036
(202) 296-6889
brianne@theusconstitution.org
Counsel for Petitioners
July 6, 2020 * Counsel of Record